So, apprarently there were a batch of fake backers with photos of celebrities with their names being similar to the celebrity, and strangely often with a French-Canadian last name. They were shiny new profiles, no previous backed projects, or backing the same projects in numbers with $1 pledges or backing projects who were obviously going to fail, to keep the illusion.

The developers of Elementary, My Dear Holmes say they had nothing to do with it and questioned it with Kickstarter and Amazon, hoping to perhaps confirm something weird and get these backers deleted. Instead the campaign was suspended.

Usually only the developers profit from this type of fraud, hence it is easy to declare them guilty before being proven innocent. This time though it involves a whole Ouya community, who I assume is desperate for new games, and possibly the developers are not the guilty culprit. We might never know what happened exactly.

I always suspected that many backers on projects on Kickstarter were fake, that the owners of such projects, seeing themselves almost reaching their goal, but seeing it slipping away at the last minute from a lack of a few backers, will come up with the money to ensure success and get the money. That may be the case for thousands of projects with no evidence to prove it.

This is an issue with Kickstarter, that if you do not reach your goal, you don't get anything. Indiegogo does not have this limitation, you can choose to have the money anyway, even if the goal is not reached, preventing the need for these frauds. But Indiegogo does not attract as many backers, so you are always better off on Kickstarter.

I find it acceptable when project owners will come up with the money to ensure their project is successful when it is required to reach a goal which nearly made it on its own. However in the case of Elementary My Dear Holmes, we are talking too large a proportion of the whole goal. At that point we cannot fail but to call it fraud. A type of fraud that could undermine the Kickstarter concept as a whole if left unchecked.

The idea was that if the goal was reached, Ouya would give them an equal amount of money to produce their game. So it did not matter if most of the money was not obtained through Kickstarter, the Ouya prize was the goal.

Another issue is that Ouya has set a minimum of $50,000 for project goals on Kickstarter to get an equal amount of money in return if successful. Not many developers could easily get that on any project without quite a reputation and credibility to begin with. Hence the temptation to use fake backers. Normally project owners set their goal as to the ultimate minimum with which they could actually survive with and deliver their project.

At the very least this is all illuminating, and might lead to some changes at Kickstarter. I think it should, at their end I'm sure they can prevent this from happening, at least on a large scale.

In the meantime the question is now, whenever we back a project on Kickstarter, are there fake backers, are there fake backers actually backing suspiciously a lot of money? And if it appears so, then would the game still be made if the project is successful?

Because I guess in the end this is all that matters. Is it a fraud to help the goal to be reached so the project is successful and gets made, or is it a fraud where people want the money but don't intend to deliver on their promises?

Well, in the case of Elementary, my dear Holmes, I have no doubt the company is genuine, and would have delivered the game.

As to if they are guilty of this fraud, they certainly present a convincing innocent front, with some transparency as to what they have done and their communications with Amazon and Kickstarter. Is the Ouya community involved somehow? Who knows?

But of course, it does not look good from whichever angle you choose to look at it from. The lesson learned here for any project owner, now that two projects have been suspended, is to stay away from fake backers, and set your goal as the ultimate minimum required.

rmt, Gridiron did not get suspended, they are still open and the Kickstarter is in it's last 7 hours. I still don't get how they got 6 backers to pledge 10K each. The only perk was to attend a super bowl party? Really?

I don't care how they get their money as long as they deliver the game. That is my only concern.

So if we did not astroturf ourselves, do I know who did it then? Do I know what vile sorcery is this? Do I know who tried to make us look like shit and succeeded? No, I don't. I wish I did. Do I have my suspicions on whom I think did it? Yes, I do. But they are suspicions. Strong suspicions, but suspicions nonetheless. And I will not make claims based purely on suspicions.

It was indicated that Ouya did it from the beginning. At least that is what I gathered. Unfortunately, I do not believe we will ever find out. I just do not get why Gridiron is still going. They aroused more suspicion than Elementary.

I still would not hesitate to support them if they ran another one. Just my opinion.

I feel the guilty party would not be Ouya, it would be a competitor with its own gaming project who hopes to get some of that million from Ouya. A million is not much if they can match up to $250,000 per project. That means technically only 4 successful projects could easily get all of Ouya's money.

It had to be obvious, hence all the celebrity photos and names. If you were to create that many fake backers on your own project, would you make it so obvious so anyone can easily match them all up? I would not. That alone warrants me giving them the benefit of the doubt.

You were too quick Gil, you were not supposed to read all the changes. I always immediately rework my posts after posting, and don't indicate it is edited because I assume no one would have the time to read the changes.